What the Open Way
actually means
Three commitments you can test.
Built on open IFC and BCF
Your models, issues and documents live in formats defined by buildingSMART and ISO, not by Catenda. Any compliant tool can read them. The standard is the contract; we just implement it honestly.
One open node in your toolchain
Revit, ArchiCAD, Tekla, Solibri, your own scripts: they connect through an open API and open standards, not a proprietary bridge we control. You assemble the stack that fits your project.
A friend who shares the knowhow
Most Catendians come from the field. We share what we know, with clients and even with competitors, because our job is to spread knowhow, not hoard it. You gain a partner, not just a tool.
A 10x professional simply works unblocked.
The data does the fetching now.Most of an AECO professional’s day is not the work. It is finding the right file, checking it is the latest one, chasing the person who changed it, and re-typing what the model already knows into a report. The expertise is real; the friction around it is waste.
When the data is open and structured, that friction collapses. The question stops being “where is the answer” and becomes “what do we do about it”. Same person, same skill, an order of magnitude more of it spent on judgement instead of retrieval. That is the 10x: not a heroic individual, but an unblocked one.
Open standards
Anyone can say their tool is open. The test is whether your project would survive without it. These are the standards Catenda is built on, the ones that keep your data readable, portable and yours.
Openness is where we started.
Norway, 2009. Same conviction since.Catenda was founded in Oslo in 2009, spun out of SINTEF, Scandinavia’s largest independent research institute. We did not come from a software company looking for a market. We came from the research asking how a whole industry could share building information without owning each other’s tools.
That openness shaped the company too. Deep Norwegian roots mean few hierarchies and no silos. Information flows freely, ideas are debated in the open, and we share our knowhow with clients, the buildingSMART community, even competitors. We are here to help and to make a difference.
Thirteen years on, the conviction has not moved. The people who answer your questions are some of the most knowledgeable BIM professionals around, and they care whether your data is still yours. You do not just get technology. You get a friend who will grow with you.
No lock-in. No export tax. Just your project, the open way.
This is the Open Way.
Bring your IFC. That’s it.